


Don't Make Me Wear Blue

by hiddlemethis24 (myliege_theelvenking)



Series: Bad Influences [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, FrostIron - Freeform, M/M, tiny bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 19:16:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1399384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myliege_theelvenking/pseuds/hiddlemethis24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Headcanon:<br/>Loki sometimes wears other colors than just green. But after discovering the truth of his heritage, he’s never been able to bring himself to wear blue again and there’s a veiled pain in his eyes whenever Tony wears it, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Make Me Wear Blue

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of in the same verse as my Bad Influences series, so I'm including it there, but mostly all the works in that series are kinda hazy on time. Mostly the big connection is that they're Frostiron one-shots. This has an ambiguous timeline, could be before the prank war begins or long after its concluded or during a time of peace in the middle of it. I didn't include any references.

Loki poured over a history volume as Tony went to his meeting, not even noticing when the minutes turned into an hour past when he was due to return. For all of its brevity, Midgard had had an interesting and bloody history. It was as if the mortals were determined to make as much love and war as they could possibly cram into their short lives, lending them to more violence and passion than he could remember in all of his long years in Asgard. Time moved so quickly for them, he supposed, but that should have made them want to cherish it, not waste it on bloodshed. But people were selfish. He ought to know...

Tony entered the room silently, surprised to be able to get this close before that cultured voice would intone some cleverly-crafted insult that was almost always half a compliment. Sometimes even Tony, for all his infamous snark, didn't even know when he was being insulted. Then again, he usually took everything Loki threw at him and either twisted it into a compliment or just lobbed another insult right back. It was kinda their thing.

The image of Loki so engrossed in his reading that he didn't even notice him was enough to evoke a tenderness that was always there, the undercurrent beneath the banter and the illusion of disenchantment. But it was more evident now and in these silent moments. "Hey," he finally said, his voice a soft murmur. Loki looked up and turned to face Tony, his smooth face looking slightly surprised and expectant. His expression was gentle, though, devoid of the usual taunting mask he seemed to always wear.

"I got you something," he continued with a soft smile and those thin, dark brows knit together, creating furrows in his forehead. Tony gently shook the bag in his hands, the stiff paper crackling with the movements. It looked to have come from a clothing store, something upscale no doubt, given that this was Tony Stark, Billionaire Genius and Iron Man, they were speaking of.

Tony set the bag down on a table and Loki slipped a ribbon into the book he'd been reading to mark his place before gently shutting it and sliding it to the edge of the desk. His hands came together in front of him, fingers threading together in that same maddeningly poised manner. Tony reached in to grab the silken shirt, made with a soft fabric that would glide perfectly along that flawless skin. He hoped the color would compliment his pale complexion, but then again, he'd never seen anything that looked bad on Loki. Or off Loki, either. In fact, maybe it was more important to find out how the shirt would fit in with his bedroom furnishings when it was inevitably flung across the room in their haste to press eager lips and teeth to heated flesh.

He withdrew the shirt, dyed with a medium shade of blue, not light enough to be a baby blue, but not dark enough to be the standard shade of blue. There was a slight sheen to the fabric so that it reflected a color that was more in line with baby blue, but even then it was not quite light enough to be called that. For once Tony wasn't sure how to label the color and he'd had enough tailors fussing over him to pick up on a few things over the years. He turned around to present it to Loki, his smile growing at his ability to gift the god with something he thought he'd like.

Only there was something off in Loki's gaze. There had been a gentle smile on his face when he'd initially turned, pleased at his lover's thoughtfulness. He loved to be showered with gifts and praised, as little as he would admit it. Tony didn't have to hear Loki's thanks to know. It was in the extra brightness in his eyes, the slightest widening of his smile, the softening of a sharp word or a gentler touch when he reached to pull Tony's lips to his own. But the moment his eyes fell on the shirt, his body stilled and the smile faltered as if frozen. Little by little it cracked and shattered and the inventor's mind raced to discover where he'd gone wrong.

Loki swallowed hard against the sudden intrusion in his throat, the lump that came unbidden. He'd never shown Tony, though the man knew. There were only so many secrets you could keep before they unraveled each other with weaver's fingers, plucking at the threads with the dexterity you could only achieve from being cut of the very same cloth and thus knowing its structure so intimately. Loki could be a creature of habit, predictably clothing himself in shades of green and the occasional gold, with black being another predominant color in his wardrobe. But he enjoyed cloth of other colors as well.

He enjoyed silvery ties gleaming like his old armor and deep purple shirts that somehow reminded him of mother, perhaps from when she'd insist that he and Thor wear them when they'd been young and unable to keep the mess of their deserts from staining their clothing. And though he'd initially been averse to red because of Thor, he'd grown to love it again through his Tony, radiant in his Iron Man suit of red and gold. He was not overly fond of yellow and orange, too warm to suit his pale skin (and he had to be careful with his reds as well, usually tending more towards a maroon), but he sometimes managed to include them in small doses. Brown, gray, white, all worthy colors.

And once upon a time, he'd worn blue.

He'd never worn it since he'd confronted Odin. Not since he'd gripped the Casket of Ancient Winters and watched his pale Aesir skin overtaken by the chilled blue. Not even the dark midnight colors were bearable after that. Every time he so much as thought of the blue fabric touching his skin, he felt a new wave of shame for his monstrous heritage. It was as if the color mocked him, cowing him into a pathetic state of timid submission as he shrank away from his true identity. Yet he couldn't bring himself to accept it either. For all his misdeeds, he wasn't a monster. But that crawling blue told him he was, that he was every bit meant to be feared.

Tony'd bought him a blue shirt. And it was beautiful and looked so soft and comfortable, so much so that it stirred a heavy ache in his chest. He almost couldn't breathe for a moment, his green eyes fixed on the expanse of _blue_. Why did it have to be blue? He knew he'd been still for too long. He should have made some snarky comment, insulting the cut of the shirt or dismissing the idea that he needed to be wooed like some flimsy Midgardian woman. But the words wouldn't slither past the obstruction sitting upon his vocal cords and crushing them.

_'Silver tongue turn to lead?'_

The taunting words echoed and swirled in a mind filled with the mists of uncertainty and self-doubt. Someone scrawled the word "monster" on the walls of his mind in a substance that looked suspiciously like blood. He could feel Tony's eyes upon him, shadows of concern cast over his features. But he didn't touch him, for which Loki was grateful. He couldn't trust himself not to come undone completely in the mortal's arms, tumbling apart like a flimsy tower built with a child's wooden blocks. He would, too. The gift of the blue was too much and he shied away from it, though physically he did not move.

"Loki?" Tony finally asked, the other man's voice tight and strained, teetering on a knife's blade. He'd thought he'd done something wrong. And he had, he supposed, but it wasn't Tony's fault. He didn't know.

"Don't make me wear it," he suddenly said, green eyes snapping up to Tony's brown. A lifetime of pain glittered in the moisture welling at the edges. The mortal man was confused, he knew, fear for the god's well-being clearly written on his face and in the loving gaze that made his breath hitch in his throat. Loki swallowed and closed his eyes as Tony put away the shirt. He reached for the inventor who allowed slender limbs to encircle his waist until Loki's pale face was pressed into his chest against the arc reactor.

"I can't..." he whispered painfully. "I just can't be blue."


End file.
